accessibility

I have been loosely involved in web development for 12 years. Over the course of this time I lost my sight due to a degenerative eye disease. When I started using a screen-reader I realized that navigating the web can be very difficult for persons with disabilities, and was somewhat disturbed with all of the coding mistakes that I had made over the years that may have contributed to this problem.

Hi,

I'm a multimedia developer (I can do a bit of everything but always have to learn more to complete a task), I have experience in developing HTML, CSS, Javascript, Actionscript 2 moving to 3 now and a very brief understanding of PHP.

I've recently started learning how to implement Drupal as I have undertaken the development of a website for a public body that requires a CMS and they legally need the site to comply to WCAG Double A standards for site users but not contributors or adminstrators.

Just saw this accessibility evaluation of Recovery.gov by Jim Thatcher. Recovery.gov is the highest profile Drupal government site in North America and so it is an interesting view of how this government which is committed to accessibility & open government implements this great CMS.

Here at CSU Monterey Bay we have a mandate from our Chancellor's office that all web content be accessible by 2010. This date is fast approaching, but we are moving towards a model where we automatically approve content for accessibility before it goes out to the web.

I am searching for a WYSIWYG editor, which is build using the ATAG standards in mind.
Does any of you know an editor who complies to these standards?

Setting Up a Screen Reader Test Environment
http://www.iheni.com/screen-reader-testing/

How to Use NVDA and Firefox to Test Your Web Pages for Accessibility
http://www.marcozehe.de/articles/how-to-use-nvda-and-firefox-to-test-you...

WAI-ARIA role support - How the Browsers Stack Up
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=114

Thanks,
Mike

There's been some really great work done looking at usability within Drupal - http://www.d7ux.org/

However, I do think that it is important to start talking about accessibility with any new visions of how content is going to be created and sites are going to be administered.

In discussing the question of inserting a tabindex to create an auto focus for certain pages (/user*, /node/add*, node/*/edit) so that the cursor is always sitting in the first field of the event in question, v suggested that this was more of a usability issue than an accessibility one. I recorded a friend with mobility challenges trying to create an account for those who want some understanding of how important this could be.

So I was reading Practical Accessibility Tips with WCAG 2.0

Always Use Explicit Labels is in 7 core now and has been backported ot 6.

The use the tabindex attribute is also quite scarce. Think it only shows up in the user.module as an attribute added to the form:

Right now we're indicating Required Fields using: